Publications of
Prof. Dr. Henrik Leopold

Effective resource allocation is crucial for optimizing business processes. Yet, most existing methods focus solely on single-process optimization, overlooking the interdependencies present in multi-process environments. This limitation results in inefficient resource allocation, and scalability challenges. To address this gap, we propose MuProMAC (Multi-Process Multi-Agent Coordination), a novel reinforcement learning-based method designed to optimize resource allocation across multiple interdependent business processes. Unlike prior methods, MuProMAC is the first online resource allocation method that explicitly models the interdependencies between processes and dynamically balances competing resource demands to minimize global average cycle time. We evaluate our method in five multi-process scenarios with different levels of resource contention, comparing it against state-of-the-art online resource allocation methods and three simple baselines. Our results show that MuProMAC is consistently among the top-performing methods in shared-resource environments. It achieves low cycle times and stable performance across different workload conditions, outperforming existing methods through its strong adaptability to evolving business processes and increasing complexity.

Extreme weather is often perceived as a major threat to the reliability of rail transportation. This study investigates regional rail operations in central Germany and examines whether severe weather conditions causally affect train arrival delays. We combine several years of operational data (2017–2022) with weather observations from the German Weather Service and define four component-specific treatments for adverse conditions: extreme temperature, strong wind, heavy rainfall, and snow presence. To estimate causal effects, we employ a Double Machine Learning framework based on partial linear regression (PLR–DML) and Causal Forest–DML. By reframing the weather–delay relationship as a causal question rather than a purely predictive one, the study provides evidence on whether extreme weather constitutes a materially relevant source of arrival delays. Across all four weather components, estimated average treatment effects are small in magnitude; analyses of individualized and group-level effects reveal no consistent or robust patterns of heterogeneity across lines, seasons, weekdays, or hours of the day. Robustness checks indicate that these operationally negligible estimates are not sensitive to outliers, rare-event imbalance, or to reasonable perturbations consistent with plausible unobserved confounding. Exploratory mediation analyses are consistent with the interpretation that passenger-flow variables do not materially amplify the already negligible estimated effects of severe weather on delays. Overall, the results suggest that, in this regional network, severe weather does not materially increase arrival delays. The findings underscore the importance of rigorous causal diagnostics for distinguishing perceived from materially relevant sources of delay in transportation reliability studies.

Process mining has grown into a mature research field with a wide range of techniques and applications. Much of this development builds on the pioneering work of Wil van der Aalst, whose contributions have shaped both the foundations and the growth of the discipline. Today, the field’s breadth raises the need for systematic methodological reflection to ensure that findings are robust and meaningful. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive discussion of threats to validity in process mining research. Building on the methodological framework of algorithm engineering, we analyze nine distinct validity concerns and examine how they apply across different streams of process mining. Our analysis highlights both established strengths and recurring challenges, drawing on examples from seminal contributions in the field, many inspired by Wil’s work.

Process mining aims to obtain insights from event logs through the automated analyses of recorded process data in information systems, with the ultimate aim to improve business processes running in organisations. However, real-life event logs are often incomplete, noisy, or ambiguous, such as missing timestamps or having ambiguous event labels, which traditional deterministic models cannot capture. Recent process mining developments have considered uncertainty in process mining artifacts more explicitly: in logs of recorded process behaviour, uncertainty may implicitly or explicitly influence process mining outcomes, while in process models, explicit uncertainty allows analysts to interpret and value outcomes. In this paper, we provide a conceptual foundation for uncertainty in process mining by introducing a four-level specification that separately addresses uncertainty in log attributes (e.g., activity labels of events, frequencies) and model elements (e.g., service times, read guards). For each type of uncertainty, we illustrate the levels with concrete examples to help understanding and application. We then provide a structured overview of the state of the art in stochastic process mining, classified using our specification, and present key open research challenges.

Checklists are among the most widely used instruments for guiding work, yet they have received little attention in Business Process Management (BPM) research. In 2017, we published a paper that proposed to view checklists as informational artifacts and called for a “science of checklists”. The paper proposed a conceptualization of checklists in terms of seven properties, analyzed twenty-one recurring problems with their use, and argued that a design-oriented, informational approach could be used to overcome many of these problems. The paper was published and has since been cited about thirty times. However, the research agenda it set out was not taken up and a grant proposal intended to pursue it was rejected at an early stage. In this paper, we revisit this idea as a case of an overlooked research direction. We reconstruct its argument, discuss why a published and cited idea failed to gain traction, and argue that recent developments in process mining, large language models, and AI agents make the agenda more relevant than before. Our wider aim is to ask what it means that the BPM community has paid so little attention to the artifact that arguably guides work in practice more than any other.

Recent advances in process mining technology have extended its applicability beyond traditional domains such as healthcare, finance and manufacturing, making it increasingly relevant for addressing problems in supply chain management. In our research, we explore the integration of process mining techniques within the domain of supply chain management, focusing on uncovering inefficiencies, ensuring compliance, and identifying opportunities for improvement. Therefore, we first review the technological advances in process mining relevant to supply chain management and outline six relevant approaches. We then combine the identified methodologies with expert interviews to derive and validate six specific use cases where process mining can significantly contribute to supply chain efficiency and resilience. The paper presents a detailed description of these use cases, demonstrating how process mining can provide actionable insights for a wide range of supply chain

problems. We discuss the implications of our findings for practitioners, who benefit from enhanced visibility and optimisation opportunities, and researchers, who are provided with a roadmap for exploration of this promising interdisciplinary field. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to explore potential use cases for process mining in a supply chain context, providing a comprehensive perspective on the potential benefits and challenges.

Research on algorithms has drastically increased in recent years. Various sub-disciplines of computer science investigate algorithms according to different objectives and standards. This plurality of the field has led to various methodological advances that have not yet been transferred to neighboring sub-disciplines. The central roadblock for a better knowledge exchange is the lack of a common methodological framework integrating the perspectives of these sub-disciplines. It is the objective of this article to develop such a research framework for algorithm engineering. Our framework builds on three areas discussed in the philosophy of science: ontology, epistemology and methodology. The framework helps us to identify and discuss various validity concerns relevant for any contribution on algorithms in various areas of computer science.

Process mining is a discipline that enables organizations to discover and analyze their work processes. A prerequisite for conducting a process mining initiative is the so-called event log, which is not always readily available. In such cases, extracting an event log involves various time-consuming tasks, such as creating tailor-made structured query language (SQL) scripts to extract an event log from a relational database. With this work, we investigate the use of large language models (LLMs) to support event log extraction, particularly by leveraging LLMs ability to produce SQL scripts. In this paper, we report on how effectively an LLM can assist with event log extraction for process mining. Despite the intrinsic non-deterministic nature of LLMs, our results show the potential of future LLM-assisted event log extraction tools, especially when domain and data knowledge are available. The implementation of such tools can increase access to event log extraction to a broader range of users within an organization by reducing the reliance on specialized technical skills for producing relational database query scripts and minimizing manual effort.

Users generate tremendous amounts of data on the Internet every day. This so-called user-generated content (UGC) is valuable input for organizations since it may include individual experiences, opinions, and desires with respect to the products and services they offer. To automatically process UGC, automated techniques, typically referred to as Needmining, have been developed. Existing Needmining approaches extract customer needs from UGC by binarily classifying unstructured textual data into need-content and no-need content. However, they are not able to extract the specific needs. We address this research gap by developing a decision support artifact that re-conceptualizes Needmining from a binary classification problem to a token-classification problem to extract specific needs from informative content. To achieve this, we break down customer needs into components, i.e. attributes and characteristics and develop a token classification artifact. The artifact accurately identifies the need-components and, therefore, can identify specific customer needs in user-generated content. We organize and discuss the value of the artifact's output and further enrich the model with sentiment data to distinguish relevant needs. If applied, the artifact can realize efficiency gains for decisionmakers in the field of product development as it automatically and quickly identifies relevant consumer needs.

A key business challenge of process mining is to appeal to decision-makers who seek to differentiate,
with the ambition to go beyond operational optimization. One way to position process mining as a
differentiator is to integrate operational process and experience journey perspectives, with the ultimate
goal to better align operations with the needs of customers and other external stakeholders. To exemplify
this direction, this demonstration presents SAP’s journey-to-process analytics capabilities that fuse
experience with process data, allowing organizations to generate insights about how operations affect
experience.

A key business challenge of process mining is to appeal to decision-makers who seek to differentiate, with the ambition to go beyond operational optimization. One way to position process mining as a differentiator is to integrate operational process and experience journey perspectives, with the ultimate goal to better align operations with the needs of customers and other external stakeholders. To exemplify this direction, this demonstration presents SAP’s journey-to-process analytics capabilities that fuse experience with process data, allowing organizations to generate insights about how operations affect experience.

The identification of undesirable behavior in event logs is an important aspect of process mining that is often addressed by anomaly detection methods. Traditional anomaly detection methods tend to focus on statistically rare behavior and neglect the subtle difference between rarity and undesirability. The introduction of semantic anomaly detection has opened a promising avenue by identifying semantically deviant behavior. This work addresses a gap in semantic anomaly detection, which typically indicates the occurrence of an anomaly without explaining the nature of the anomaly. We propose xSemAD, an approach that uses a sequence-to-sequence model to go beyond pure identification and provides extended explanations. In essence, our approach learns constraints from a given process model repository and then checks whether these constraints hold in the considered event log. This approach not only helps understand the specifics of the undesired behavior, but also facilitates targeted corrective actions. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing state-of-the-art semantic anomaly detection methods.

Process models play an important role in various software engineering contexts. Among others, they are used to capture business-related requirements and provide the basis for the development of process-oriented applications in low-code/no-code settings. To support modelers in creating, checking, and maintaining process models, dedicated tools are available. While these tools are generally considered as indispensable to capture process models for their later use, the initial version of a process model is often sketched on a whiteboard or a piece of paper. This has been found to have great advantages, especially with respect to communication and collaboration. It, however, also creates the need to subsequently transform the model sketch into a digital counterpart that can be further processed by modeling and analysis tools. Therefore, to automate this task, various so-called sketch recognition approaches have been defined in the past. Yet, these existing approaches are too limited for use in practice, since they, for instance, require sketches to be created on a digital device or do not address the recognition of edges or textual labels. Against this background, we use this paper to introduce Sketch2Process, the first end-to-end sketch recognition approach for process models captured using BPMN. Sketch2Process uses a neural network-based architecture to recognize the shapes, edges, and textual labels of highly expressive process models, covering 25 types of BPMN elements. To train and evaluate our approach, we created a dataset consisting of 704 hand-drawn and manually annotated BPMN models. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach is highly accurate and consistently outperforms the state of the art.

Process models play an important role in various software engineering contexts. Among others, they are used to capture business-related requirements and provide the basis for the development of process-oriented applications in low-code/no-code settings. To support modelers in creating, checking, and maintaining process models, dedicated tools are available. While these tools are generally considered as indispensable to capture process models for their later use, the initial version of a process model is often sketched on a whiteboard or a piece of paper. This has been found to have great advantages, especially with respect to communication and collaboration. It, however, also creates the need to subsequently transform the model sketch into a digital counterpart that can be further processed by modeling and analysis tools. Therefore, to automate this task, various so-called sketch recognition approaches have been defined in the past. Yet, these existing approaches are too limited for use in practice, since they, for instance, require sketches to be created on a digital device or do not address the recognition of edges or textual labels. Against this background, we use this paper to introduce Sketch2Process, the first end-to-end sketch recognition approach for process models captured using BPMN. Sketch2Process uses a neural network-based architecture to recognize the shapes, edges, and textual labels of highly expressive process models, covering 25 types of BPMN elements. To train and evaluate our approach, we created a dataset consisting of 704 hand-drawn and manually annotated BPMN models. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach is highly accurate and consistently outperforms the state of the art.

GPT-3 and several other language models (LMs) can effectively address various natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including machine translation and text summarization. Recently, they have also been successfully employed in the business process management (BPM) domain, e.g., for predictive process monitoring and process extraction from text. This, however, typically requires fine-tuning the employed LM, which, among others, necessitates large amounts of suitable training data. A possible solution to this problem is the use of prompt engineering, which leverages pre-trained LMs without fine-tuning them. Recognizing this, we argue that prompt engineering can help bring the capabilities of LMs to BPM research. We use this position paper to develop a research agenda for the use of prompt engineering for BPM research by identifying the associated potentials and challenges.

Processes in healthcare are complex and data-intensive. Process mining uses data recorded during process execution to obtain an understanding of the actual execution of a process. Due to the complexity of healthcare processes, it is useful to consider and analyse the process execution of certain cohorts, such as old and young patients, separately. While such analysis is facilitated by process variant analysis techniques, existing approaches for process variant analysis only consider a comparison based on the control flow and performance perspectives. Given the large amount of event data attributes available in healthcare settings, we propose the first data-based process variant analysis approach. Our approach allows comparing process variants based on differences in event data attributes by building on statistical tests. We applied our approach on the MIMIC-IV real-world data set on hospitalizations in the US, where we demonstrate that the approach is feasible and can actually provide relevant medical insights.

Many organizations strive to increase the level of automation in their business processes. While automation historically was mainly concerned with automating physical labor, current automation efforts mostly focus on automation in a digital manner, thus targeting work that is related to the interaction between humans and computers. This type of automation, commonly referred to as business process automation, has many facets. Yet, academic literature mainly focuses on Robotic Process Automation, a specific automation capability. Recognizing that leading vendors offer automation capabilities going way beyond that, we use this paper to develop a detailed understanding of business process automation in industry. To this end, we conduct a structured market analysis of the 18 predominant vendors of business process automation solutions as identified by Gartner. As a result, we provide a comprehensive overview of the business process automation capabilities currently offered by industrial vendors. We show which types and facets of automation exist and which aspects represent promising directions for the future.

GPT-3 and several other language models (LMs) can effectively address various natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including machine translation and text summarization. Recently, they have also been successfully employed in the business process management (BPM) domain, e.g., for predictive process monitoring and process extraction from text. This, however, typically requires fine-tuning the employed LM, which, among others, necessitates large amounts of suitable training data. A possible solution to this problem is the use of prompt engineering, which leverages pre-trained LMs without fine-tuning them. Recognizing this, we argue that prompt engineering can help bring the capabilities of LMs to BPM research. We use this position paper to develop a research agenda for the use of prompt engineering for BPM research by identifying the associated potentials and challenges.

Process mining allows organizations to obtain relevant insights into the execution of their processes. However, the starting point of any process mining analysis is an event log, which is typically not readily available in practice. The extraction of event logs from the relevant databases is a manual and highly time-consuming task, and often a hurdle for the application of process mining altogether. Available support for event log extraction comes with different assumptions and requirements and only provides limited automated support. In this paper, we therefore take a novel angle at supporting event log extraction. The core idea of our paper is to use an existing process model as a starting point and automatically identify to which database tables the activities of the considered process model relate to. Based on the resulting mapping, an event log can then be extracted in an automated fashion. We use this paper to define a first approach that is able to identify such a mapping between a process model and a database. We evaluate our approach using three real-world databases and five process models from the purchase-to-pay domain. The results of our evaluation show that our approach has the potential to successfully support event log extraction based on matching.

Process automation is a crucial strategy for improving business processes, but little attention has been paid to the effects that automation has once it is operational. This paper addresses this research problem by reviewing the literature on human-automation interaction. Although many of the studies in this field have been conducted in different domains, they provide a foundation for developing propositions about process automation effects. Our analysis focuses on how humans perceive automation technology when working within a process, allowing us to propose an effective engagement model between technology, process participants, process managers, and software developers. This paper offers insights and recommendations that can help organizations optimize their use of process automation. We further derive novel research questions for a discourse within the process automation community.

Predictive process monitoring techniques leverage machine learning (ML) to predict future characteristics of a case, such as the process outcome or the remaining run time. Available techniques employ various models and different types of input data to produce accurate predictions. However, from a practical perspective, explainability is another important requirement besides accuracy since predictive process monitoring techniques frequently support decision-making in critical domains. Techniques from the area of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) aim to provide this capability and create transparency and interpretability for black-box ML models. While several explainable predictive process monitoring techniques exist, none of them leverages textual data. This is surprising since textual data can provide a rich context to a process that numerical features cannot capture. Recognizing this, we use this paper to investigate how the combination of textual and non-textual data can be used for explainable predictive process monitoring and analyze how the incorporation of textual data affects both the predictions and the explainability. Our experiments show that using textual data requires more computation time but can lead to a notable improvement in prediction quality with comparable results for explainability.

Process mining techniques are valuable to gain insights into and help improve (work) processes. Many of these techniques focus on the sequential order in which activities are performed. Few of these techniques consider the statistical relations within processes. In particular, existing techniques do not allow insights into how responses to an event (action) result in desired or undesired outcomes (effects). We propose and formalize the ARE miner, a novel technique that allows us to analyze and understand these action-response-effect patterns. We take a statistical approach to uncover potential dependency relations in these patterns. The goal of this research is to generate processes that are: (1) appropriately represented, and (2) effectively filtered to show meaningful relations. We evaluate the ARE miner in two ways. First, we use an artificial data set to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ARE miner compared to two traditional process-oriented approaches. Second, we apply the ARE miner to a real-world data set from a Dutch healthcare institution. We show that the ARE miner generates comprehensible representations that lead to informative insights into statistical relations between actions, responses, and effects.

An important part of healthcare decision making is to understand how certain actions relate to desired and undesired outcomes. One key challenge is to deal with confounding variables, i.e., variables that influence the relation between actions and outcomes. Existing techniques aim to uncover the underlying statistical relations between actions and outcomes, but either do not account for confounding variables or only consider the process or case level instead of the event level. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel relation mining approach for healthcare processes that 1) explicitly accounts for confounding variables at the event level, and 2) transparently communicates the effect of the confounding variables to the user. We demonstrate the applicability and importance of our approach using two evaluation experiments. We use a real-world healthcare dataset to show that the identified relations indeed provide important input for decision making in healthcare processes. We use a synthetic dataset to illustrate the importance of our approach in the general setting of causal model estimation.

Process mining is a family of techniques that can aid healthcare organizations in improving their processes. Most existing process mining techniques do not provide insights into the impact that activities can have on the process. Some novel techniques try to address this issue, but these techniques are either not generic in their approach or cannot provide insights into complex relations in organizational processes. We propose a novel and generic approach with the goal of producing insights into statistical relations within healthcare processes. We apply the approach on a public data set on sepsis in an emergency room. We find that the hospital might optimize its process in two respects: (1) their cost-benefit balance for patient care by considering their activities in terms of continuous monitoring and substance administration, and (2) their policies on discharging patients as to ensure patients are not discharged too early and return to the emergency room.

An important part of healthcare decision making is to understand how certain actions relate to desired and undesired outcomes. One key challenge is to deal with confounding variables, i.e., variables that influence the relation between actions and outcomes. Existing techniques aim to uncover the underlying statistical relations between actions and outcomes, but either do not account for confounding variables or only consider the process or case level instead of the event level. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel relation mining approach for healthcare processes that 1) explicitly accounts for confounding variables at the event level, and 2) transparently communicates the effect of the confounding variables to the user. We demonstrate the applicability and importance of our approach using two evaluation experiments. We use a real-world healthcare dataset to show that the identified relations indeed provide important input for decision making in healthcare processes. We use a synthetic dataset to illustrate the importance of our approach in the general setting of causal model estimation.

Pair programming is a technique where two programmers work together. This technique offers benefits such as improved quality of the code, faster task completion, and increased participant satisfaction. Existing research in Business Process Management has not studied the advantages of pair process modeling in comparison to individual modeling. In this paper, we focus on the effect of conducting modeling tasks in pairs on process model quality and participants’ satisfaction. In an experiment, we let novice modelers perform modeling tasks individually and in pairs. Contrary to pair programming findings, we could not statistically support that pair modeling improves the process model’s quality. Similar to pair programming, the experiment did reveal that the participants are highly satisfied when performing modeling tasks in pairs. Considering this result, instructors or managers may want to use the pair setup for training purposes.

Process mining is widely used to visualize, analyze, and improve business processes. However, often its application is hindered by the considerable preparation effort that needs to be conducted by humans. One of the key tasks required in this context is obtaining the input artifact for process mining techniques: the event log. The data that is required for building such an event log typically needs to be collected from several databases and then transformed into a suitable format. While it has become clear to both academics and practitioners that the amount of human work is substantial, there is no deep understanding of the exact activities humans need to perform. Therefore, we use this paper to develop a precise understanding of how humans are involved in event log extraction. Based on a structured literature review and qualitative data coding, we derive a taxonomy of human tasks in event log extraction. This taxonomy can serve as input for both future automation efforts, as well as for process mining methodologies.

Many goods, including pharmaceuticals, require close temperature monitoring. This is important not only for complying with regulations but also for guaranteeing safety of use. A particular challenge in controlling a product's temperature arises during transportation. In cold supply chains (SCs), temperature is maintained by refrigerated containers. However, many situations, e.g. cooling system failure, lead to ambient temperature changes, and this needs to be detected as early as possible to prevent product damage. Existing approaches to temperature prediction are confined to long-term forecasts with relatively stable ambient temperatures and/or rely on multiple sensors in the known fixed positions. Since interventions in a SC are required immediately, there is a need for methods that provide real-time predictions regarding regular ambient temperature instability, i.e. when the ambient temperature changes unexpectedly in the short term. We propose a novel method that extends the applicability of Newton's law of cooling (NLC) to changeable ambient temperatures based on a set of temperature stability conditions and a sensor measurement error. In the method, an optimal number of measurements that characterize stable ambient temperatures and improve prediction reliability are selected. We compare the adapted NLC with artificial neural networks and autoregressive moving average models with respect to deviation prediction, prediction error, and execution time. Our evaluation based on real-world data shows that the adapted NLC outperforms existing baseline methods. In contrast to existing solutions, our method does not require any knowledge about the positioning of products within the container, further increasing its practical value.

Anomaly detection in process mining aims to recognize outlying or unexpected behavior in event logs for purposes such as the removal of noise and identification of conformance violations. Existing techniques for this task are primarily frequency-based, arguing that behavior is anomalous because it is uncommon. However, such techniques ignore the semantics of recorded events and, therefore, do not take the meaning of potential anomalies into consideration. In this work, we overcome this caveat and focus on the detection of anomalies from a semantic perspective, arguing that anomalies can be recognized when process behavior does not make sense. To achieve this, we propose an approach that exploits the natural language associated with events. Our key idea is to detect anomalous process behavior by identifying semantically inconsistent execution patterns. To detect such patterns, we first automatically extract business objects and actions from the textual labels of events. We then compare these against a process-independent knowledge base. By populating this knowledge base with patterns from various kinds of resources, our approach can be used in a range of contexts and domains. We demonstrate the capability of our approach to successfully detect semantic execution anomalies through an evaluation based on a set of real-world and synthetic event logs and show the complementary nature of semantics-based anomaly detection to existing frequency-based techniques.

Before the findings of a process mining project can be turned into actionable insights or recommendations, it is essential to make sure that the findings are actually valid. Therefore, the evaluation of the findings is a crucial part of a successful process mining project. Current process mining methodologies, however, fall short in providing actionable support to perform such an evaluation. This is especially true when domain experts are involved. To close this gap, we performed a literature study considering all process mining case studies published in the last two decades. In total, we identified 244 candidate papers of which we analyzed 80 in depth. Based on this literature study, we found a need for a more systematic approach for qualitative evaluations in process mining projects where domain experts are involved. Therefore, we build on these results to propose six validation strategies, which originate from qualitative research. We believe that this proposal for more rigor in the evaluation phase of process mining projects helps to move the discipline forward.

Before the findings of a process mining project can be turned into actionable insights or recommendations, it is essential to make sure that the findings are actually valid. Therefore, the evaluation of the findings is a crucial part of a successful process mining project. Current process mining methodologies, however, fall short in providing actionable support to perform such an evaluation. This is especially true when domain experts are involved. To close this gap, we performed a literature study considering all process mining case studies published in the last two decades. In total, we identified 244 candidate papers of which we analyzed 80 in depth. Based on this literature study, we found a need for a more systematic approach for qualitative evaluations in process mining projects where domain experts are involved. Therefore, we build on these results to propose six validation strategies, which originate from qualitative research. We believe that this proposal for more rigor in the evaluation phase of process mining projects helps to move the discipline forward.

Despite the widespread availability of process modeling tools, the first version of a process model is often drawn by hand on a piece of paper or whiteboard, especially when several people are involved in its elicitation. Though this has been found to be beneficial for the modeling task itself, it also creates the need to manually convert hand-drawn models afterward, such that they can be further used in a modeling tool. This manual transformation is associated with considerable time and effort and, furthermore, creates undesirable friction in the modeling workflow. In this paper, we alleviate this problem by presenting a technique that can automatically recognize and convert a sketch process model into a digital BPMN model. A key driver and contribution of our work is the creation of a publicly available dataset consisting of 502 manually annotated, hand-drawn BPMN models, covering 25 different BPMN elements. Based on this data set, we have established a neural network-based recognition technique that can reliably recognize and transform hand-drawn BPMN models. Our evaluation shows that our technique considerably outperforms available baselines and, therefore, provides a valuable basis to smoothen the modeling process.

Conformance checking enables organizations to automatically identify compliance violations based on the analysis of observed event data. A crucial requirement for conformance-checking techniques is that observed events can be mapped to normative process models used to specify allowed behavior. Without a mapping, it is not possible to determine if an observed event trace conforms to the specification or not. A considerable problem in this regard is that establishing a mapping between events and process model activities is an inherently uncertain task. Since the use of a particular mapping directly influences the conformance of an event trace to a specification, this uncertainty represents a major issue for conformance checking. To overcome this issue, we introduce a probabilistic conformance-checking technique that can deal with uncertain mappings. Our technique avoids the need to select a single mapping by taking the entire spectrum of possible mappings into account. A quantitative evaluation demonstrates that our technique can be applied on a considerable number of real-world processes where existing conformance-checking techniques fail.

While supporting the execution of business processes, information systems record event logs. Conformance checking relies on these logs to analyze whether the recorded behavior of a process conforms to the behavior of a normative specification. A key assumption of existing conformance checking techniques, however, is that all events are associated with timestamps that allow to infer a total order of events per process instance. Unfortunately, this assumption is often violated in practice. Due to synchronization issues, manual event recordings, or data corruption, events are only partially ordered. In this paper, we put forward the problem of partial order resolution of event logs to close this gap. It refers to the construction of a probability distribution over all possible total orders of events of an instance. To cope with the order uncertainty in real-world data, we present several estimators for this task, incorporating different notions of behavioral abstraction. Moreover, to reduce the runtime of conformance checking based on partial order resolution, we introduce an approximation method that comes with a bounded error in terms of accuracy. Our experiments with real-world and synthetic data reveal that our approach improves accuracy over the state-of-the-art considerably.

Process mining enables organizations to capture and improve their processes based on fact-based process execution data. A key question in the context of process improvement is how response s to an event (action) result in desired or undesired outcomes (effects). From a process perspective, this requires understanding the action-response patterns that occur. Current discovery techniques do not allow organizations to gain such insights. In this paper we present a novel approach to tackle this problem. We propose and formalize a technique to discover action-response-effect patterns. In this technique we use well-established statistical tests to uncover potential dependency relations between each response and its effect s on the cases. The goal of this technique is to provide organizations with processes that are: (1) appropriately represented, and (2) effectively filtered to show meaningful relations. The approach is evaluated on a real-world data set from a Dutch healthcare facility in the context of aggressive behavior of clients and the response s of caretakers.

Process mining enables organizations to capture and improve their processes based on fact-based process execution data. A key question in the context of process improvement is how response s to an event (action) result in desired or undesired outcomes (effects). From a process perspective, this requires understanding the action-response patterns that occur. Current discovery techniques do not allow organizations to gain such insights. In this paper we present a novel approach to tackle this problem. We propose and formalize a technique to discover action-response-effect patterns. In this technique we use well-established statistical tests to uncover potential dependency relations between each response and its effect s on the cases. The goal of this technique is to provide organizations with processes that are: (1) appropriately represented, and (2) effectively filtered to show meaningful relations. The approach is evaluated on a real-world data set from a Dutch healthcare facility in the context of aggressive behavior of clients and the response s of caretakers.

Many process model analysis techniques rely on the accurate analysis of the natural language contents captured in the models’ activity labels. Since these labels are typically short and diverse in terms of their grammatical style, standard natural language processing tools are not suitable to analyze them. While a dedicated technique for the analysis of process model activity labels was proposed in the past, it suffers from considerable limitations. First of all, its performance varies greatly among data sets with different characteristics and it cannot handle uncommon grammatical styles. What is more, adapting the technique requires in-depth domain knowledge. We use this paper to propose a machine learning-based technique for activity label analysis that overcomes the issues associated with this rule-based state of the art. Our technique conceptualizes activity label analysis as a tagging task based on a Hidden Markov Model. By doing so, the analysis of activity labels no longer requires the manual specification of rules. An evaluation using a collection of 15,000 activity labels demonstrates that our machine learning-based technique outperforms the state of the art in all aspects.

Understanding conceptual models of business domains is a key skill for practitioners tasked with systems analysis and design. Research in this field predominantly uses experiments with specific user proxy cohorts to examine factors that explain how well different types of conceptual models can be comprehended by model viewers. However, the results from these studies are difficult to compare. One key difficulty rests in the unsystematic and fluctuating consideration of model viewer characteristics (MVCs) to date. In this paper, we review MVCs used in prominent prior studies on conceptual model comprehension. We then design an empirical review of the influence of MVCS through a global, cross-sectional experimental study in which over 500 student and practitioner users were asked to answer comprehension questions about a prominent type of conceptual model - BPMN process models. As an experimental treatment, we used good versus bad layout in order to increase the variance of performance. Our results show MVC to be a multi-dimensional construct. Moreover, process model comprehension is related in different ways to different traits of the MVC construct. Based on these findings, we offer guidance for experimental designs in this area of research and provide implications for the study of MVCs.

People with intellectual disabilities often live in residential care facilities that aim to provide their clients with the best possible quality of life. Aggressive behavior forms a threat to not only the quality of life of the clients, but also the safety of the staff. This study aims to uncover the dynamics underlying the evolution of aggressive behavior in people with intellectual disabilities. We take a process mining approach to analyze patterns of aggressive behavior. More specifically, we analyze data from 1,115 clients from a Dutch residential care facility over a period of three years. Our results show that there are two different groups of cases: those exclusively showing the same type of aggressive behavior and those who show mixed types of aggressive behavior. What stands out is that physical aggression towards other people plays a key role in the patterns of aggressive behavior. The results were validated with a behavioral expert from the care organization.

In this paper we analyze the role of power relations in the emergence of workarounds in Health Information Systems (HISs). Using an explorative multi-case study of five healthcare organizations in the Netherlands, we identify 51 workarounds as well as the underlying power relations that underlie them. We distinguish two main types of power that are important for the emergence of workarounds: (1) hierarchical differences between actors and (2) system restrictions. Our study unpacks the link between power and HISs, illustrating how actors respond to hierarchical differences and system restrictions to exert their 'power to work around'.

This paper is a report paper that focuses on research at the intersec-

tion of business process management and requirements engineering. It

gives an overview of the research on natural language processing with

process models organized in terms of 25 challenges. This research line

is pursued in a cross-university collaboration between the authors and

further colleagues. We describe the most important contributions of

the authors and highlight directions for future research.

In this paper we analyze the role of power relations in the emergence of workarounds in Health Information Systems (HISs). Using an explorative multi-case study of five healthcare organizations in the Netherlands, we identify 51 workarounds as well as the underlying power relations that underlie them. We distinguish two main types of power that are important for the emergence of workarounds: (1) hierarchical differences between actors and (2) system restrictions. Our study unpacks the link between power and HISs, illustrating how actors respond to hierarchical differences and system restrictions to exert their 'power to work around'.

Process models are an important means to capture information on organizational operations and often represent the starting point for process analysis and improvement. Since the manual elicitation and creation of process models is a time-intensive endeavor, a variety of techniques have been developed that automatically derive process models from textual process descriptions. However, these techniques, so far, only focus on the extraction of traditional, imperative process models. The extraction of declarative process models, which allow to effectively capture complex process behavior in a compact fashion, has not been addressed. In this paper we close this gap by presenting the first automated approach for the extraction of declarative process models from natural language. To achieve this, we developed tailored Natural Language Processing techniques that identify activities and their inter-relations from textual constraint descriptions. A quantitative evaluation shows that our approach is able to generate constraints that closely resemble those established by humans. Therefore, our approach provides automated support for an otherwise tedious and complex manual endeavor.

Context: The analysis of requirements for business-related software systems is often supported by using business process models. However, the final requirements are typically still specified in natural language. This means that the knowledge captured in process models must be consistently transferred to the specified requirements. Possible inconsistencies between process models and requirements represent a serious threat for the successful development of the software system and may require the repetition of process analysis activities. Objective: The objective of this paper is to address the problem of inconsistency between process models and natural language requirements in the context of software development. Method: We define a semi-automated approach that consists of a process model-based procedure for capturing execution-related data in requirements models and an algorithm that takes these models as input for generating natural language requirements. We evaluated our approach in the context of a multiple case study with three organizations and a total of 13 software development projects. Results: We found that our approach can successfully generate well-readable requirements, which do not only positively contribute to consistency, but also to the completeness and maintainability of requirements. The practical use of our approach to identify a suitable subcontractor on the market in 11 of the 13 projects further highlights the practical value of our approach. Conclusion: Our approach provides a structured way to obtain high-quality requirements documents from process models and to maintain textual and visual representations of requirements in a consistent way.

Process model matching refers to the automatic identification of corresponding activities between two process models. It represents the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as the identification of similar process parts or process model search. A central problem is how to evaluate the performance of process model matching techniques. Current evaluation methods require a binary gold standard that clearly defines which correspondences are correct. The problem is that often not even humans can agree on a set of correct correspondences. Hence, evaluating the performance of matching techniques based on a binary gold standard does not take the true complexity of the matching problem into account and does not fairly assess the capabilities of a matching technique. In this paper, we propose a novel evaluation procedure for process model matching techniques. In particular, we build on the assessments of multiple annotators to define the notion of a non-binary gold standard. In this way, we avoid the problem of agreeing on a single set of correct correspondences. Based on this non-binary gold standard, we introduce probabilistic versions of precision, recall, and F-measure as well as a distance-based performance measure. We use a dataset from the Process Model Matching Contest 2015 and a total of 16 matching systems to assess and compare the insights that can be obtained by using our evaluation procedure. We find that our probabilistic evaluation procedure allows us to gain more detailed insights into the performance of matching systems than a traditional evaluation based on a binary gold standard.

Textual process descriptions are widely used in organizations since they can be created and understood by virtually everyone. Because of their widespread use, they also provide a valuable source for process analysis, such as compliance checking. However, the inherent ambiguity of natural language impedes the automated analysis of textual process descriptions. While human readers can use their context knowledge to correctly understand statements with multiple possible interpretations, automated tools currently have to make assumptions about their correct meaning. As a result, compliance-checking techniques are prone to draw incorrect conclusions about the proper execution of a process. To provide a comprehensive solution to these reasoning problems, we use this paper to introduce the concept of a behavioral space as a means to deal with behavioral ambiguity in textual process descriptions. A behavioral space captures all possible interpretations of a textual process description in a systematic manner. Thus, it avoids the problem of focusing on a single, possibly incorrect interpretation. We use a quantitative evaluation with a set of 47 textual process descriptions to demonstrate the usefulness of a behavioral space for compliance checking in the context of ambiguous texts.

The Business Process Management (BPM) field focuses in the coordination of labor so that or-ganizational processes are smoothly executed in a way that products and services are properlydelivered. At the same time, NLP has reached a maturity level that enables its widespread ap-plication in many contexts, thanks to publicly available frameworks. In this position paper, weshow how NLP has potential in raising the benefits of BPM practices at different levels. In-stead of being exhaustive, we show selected key challenges were a successful application of NLPtechniques would facilitate the automation of particular tasks that nowadays require a significanteffort to accomplish. Finally, we report on applications that consider both the process perspectiveand its enhancement through NLP.

The continuous digitization requires organizations to improve the automation of their business processes. Among others, this has lead to an increased interest in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA solutions emerge in the form of software that automatically executes repetitive and routine tasks. While the benefits of RPA on cost savings and other relevant performance indicators have been demonstrated in different contexts, one of the key challenges for RPA endeavors is to effectively identify processes and tasks that are suitable for automation. Textual process descriptions, such as work instructions, provide rich and important insights about this matter. However, organizations often maintain hundreds or even thousands of them, which makes a manual analysis unfeasible for larger organizations. Recognizing the large manual effort required to determine the current degree of automation in an organization’s business processes, we use this paper to propose an approach that is able to automatically do so. More specifically, we leverage supervised machine learning to automatically identify whether a task described in a textual process description is manual, an interaction of a human with an information system or automated. An evaluation with a set of 424 activities from a total of 47 textual process descriptions demonstrates that our approach produces satisfactory results.

The ongoing digitalization changes the nature of work. Nowadays, even complex tasks can be auto-mated and reliably performed by machines. This new wave of automation has led to an increased interest in predicting the effects of automation on job design. A recent study suggests that around half of today’s jobs could disappear in the coming twenty years. However, these results are heavily debated. Other studies claim that the effect of automation will be much less dramatic. A fundamental issue underlying all these studies is the question of how to categorize tasks. Some authors simply divide tasks into routine and non-routine tasks, others also consider which kind of cognitive abilities are required. Since the predicted effect of automation directly relates to the categories considered, a sound task framework is essential for useful predictions. Recognizing that existing task models are limited in terms of granularity and time, we use a literature study, interviews, and an analysis of historical data to systemically develop a new task framework for predicting the effects of automation. We conduct an evaluation of our framework to demonstrate the generalizability of the framework and compare the framework with existing models.

The ongoing digitalization changes the nature of work. Nowadays, even complex tasks can be auto-mated and reliably performed by machines. This new wave of automation has led to an increased interest in predicting the effects of automation on job design. A recent study suggests that around half of today’s jobs could disappear in the coming twenty years. However, these results are heavily debated. Other studies claim that the effect of automation will be much less dramatic. A fundamental issue underlying all these studies is the question of how to categorize tasks. Some authors simply divide tasks into routine and non-routine tasks, others also consider which kind of cognitive abilities are required. Since the predicted effect of automation directly relates to the categories considered, a sound task framework is essential for useful predictions. Recognizing that existing task models are limited in terms of granularity and time, we use a literature study, interviews, and an analysis of historical data to systemically develop a new task framework for predicting the effects of automation. We conduct an evaluation of our framework to demonstrate the generalizability of the framework and compare the framework with existing models.

Process models play an important role for specifying requirements of business-related software. However, the usefulness of process models is highly dependent on their quality. Recognizing this, researches have proposed various techniques for the automated quality assurance of process models. A considerable shortcoming of these techniques is the assumption that each activity label consistently refers to a single stream of action. If, however, activities textually describe control flow related aspects such as decisions or conditions, the analysis results of these tools are distorted. Due to the ambiguity that is associated with this misuse of natural language, also humans struggle with drawing valid conclusions from such inconsistently specified activities. In this paper, we therefore introduce the notion of canonicity to prevent the mixing of natural language and modeling language. We identify and formalize non-canonical patterns, which we then use to define automated techniques for detecting and refactoring activities that do not comply with it. We evaluated these techniques by the help of four process model collections from industry, which confirmed the applicability and accuracy of these techniques.

In recent years, a considerable number of process model matching techniques have been proposed. The goal of these techniques is to identify correspondences between the activities of two process models. However, the results from the Process Model Matching Contest 2015 reveal that there is still no universally applicable matching technique and that each technique has particular strengths and weaknesses. It is hard or even impossible to choose the best technique for a given matching problem. We propose to cope with this problem by running an ensemble of matching techniques and automatically selecting a subset of the generated correspondences. To this end, we propose a Markov Logic based optimization approach that automatically selects the best correspondences. The approach builds on an adaption of a voting technique from the domain of schema matching and combines it with process model specific constraints. Our experiments show that our approach is capable of generating results that are significantly better than alternative approaches.

Monitoring process performance is an important means for organizations to identify opportunities to improve their operations. The definition of suitable Process Performance Indicators (PPIs) is a crucial task in this regard. Because PPIs need to be in line with strategic business objectives, the formulation of PPIs is a managerial concern. Managers typically start out to provide relevant indicators in the form of natural language PPI descriptions. Therefore, considerable time and effort have to be invested to transform these descriptions into PPI definitions that can actually be monitored. This work presents an approach that automates this task. The presented approach transforms an unstructured natural language PPI description into a structured notation that is aligned with the implementation underlying a business process. To do so, we combine Hidden Markov Models and semantic matching techniques. A quantitative evaluation on the basis of a data collection obtained from practice demonstrates that our approach works accurately. Therefore, it represents a viable automated alternative to an otherwise laborious manual endeavor.

Many organizations maintain textual process descriptions alongside graphical process models. The purpose is to make process information accessible to various stakeholders, including those who are not familiar with reading and interpreting the complex execution logic of process models. Despite this merit, there is a clear risk that model and text become misaligned when changes are not applied to both descriptions consistently. For organizations with hundreds of different processes, the effort required to identify and clear up such conflicts is considerable. To support organizations in keeping their process descriptions consistent, we present an approach to automatically identify inconsistencies between a process model and a corresponding textual description. Our approach detects cases where the two process representations describe activities in different orders and detect process model activities not contained in the textual description. A quantitative evaluation with 53 real-life model-text pairs demonstrates that our approach accurately identifies inconsistencies between model and text.

Process model matching provides the basis for many process analysis techniques such as inconsistency detection and process querying. The matching task refers to the automatic identification of correspondences between activities in two process models. Numerous techniques have been developed for this purpose, all share a focus on process-level information. In this paper we introduce instance-based process matching, which specifically focuses on information related to instances of a process. In particular, we introduce six similarity metrics that each use a different type of instance information stored in the event logs associated with processes. The proposed metrics can be used as standalone matching techniques or to complement existing process model matching techniques. A quantitative evaluation on real-world data demonstrates that the use of information from event logs is essential in identifying a considerable amount of correspondences.

A crucial requirement for compliance checking techniques is that observed behavior, captured in event traces, can be mapped to the process models that specify allowed behavior. Without a mapping, it is not possible to determine if observed behavior is compliant or not. A considerable problem in this regard is that establishing a mapping between events and process model activities is an inherently uncertain task. Since the use of a particular mapping directly influences the compliance of a trace to a specification, this uncertainty represents a major issue for compliance checking. To overcome this issue, we introduce a probabilistic compliance checking method that can deal with uncertain mappings. Our method avoids the need to select a single mapping, but rather works on a spectrum of possible mappings. A quantitative evaluation demonstrates that our method can be applied on a considerable number of real-world processes where traditional compliance checking methods fail.

Healthcare can be considerably expensive for both patients and insurance companies. In some cases, high costs in healthcare are an indirect outcome of a low quality of care, for example, when treatments have to be repeated. Unfortunately, identifying the factors that lead to such repetitions is a complex and challenging task. In this paper, we focus on the domain of dental healthcare and develop an approach that can predict treatment repetitions in the context of the implant denture therapy process. The challenges associated with predicting treatment repetitions in this setting are considerable. First, hardly any patient undergoes the exact same series of treatments like another. This results in a high degree of variation in the data. Second, only a few patients experience treatment repetitions. This lead to a highly imbalance in the data. To address these challenges, we develop a prediction technique that particularly exploits the process perspective. What is more, we apply so-called resampling methods to deal with the imbalance in the data. Our resulting model is able to predict treatment repetitions with an AUC value of 0.69.

Process model matching techniques aim at automatically identifying activity correspondences between two process models that represent the same or similar behavior. By doing so, they provide essential input for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as process model search. Despite their importance, the performance of process model matching techniques is not yet convincing and several attempts to improve the performance have not been successful. This raises the question of whether it is really not possible to further improve the performance of process model matching techniques. In this paper, we aim to answer this question by conducting two consecutive analyses. First, we review existing process model matching techniques and give an overview of the specific technologies they use to identify similar activities. Second, we analyze the correspondences of the Process Model Matching Contest 2015 and reflect on the suitability of the identified technologies to identify the missing correspondences. As a result of these analyses, we present a list of three specific recommendations to improve the performance of process model matching techniques in the future.

Process model matching refers to the automatic detection of semantically equivalent or similar activities between two process models. The output of process model matchers is the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques and, therefore, must be as accurate as possible. Measuring the performance of process model matchers, however, is a difficult task. On the one hand, it is hard to define which correspondences are actually correct. On the other hand, it is challenging to appropriately take the output of matchers into account, because they often produce confidence values between zero and one. In this paper, we propose the first evaluation procedure for process model matchers that addresses both of these challenges. The core idea is to rank both the computed and the desired correspondences based on their confidence values and compare them using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. We perform an in-depth evaluation in which we apply the new evaluation procedure and illustrate how it helps gaining interesting insights.

Checklists are in use in many work domains, including aviation, manufacturing, quality control, and healthcare. Despite their adoption, the literature shows both breadth and persistence of problems with the organizational usage of checklists. In this paper, we conduct a structured literature survey to analyze checklists from the perspective of informational artifacts. Our contribution is a respective conceptualization of checklists and a rigorous analysis of their problems. As we will argue, these insights help to consider how the capabilities of IT systems can be leveraged to improve checklists and address their problematic aspects. We present our work as a basis for IT-oriented research into a relevant yet under-examined information practice in organizational work routines.

Having access to the right information is vital to the effective and efficient execution of an organization’s business processes. A major challenge in this regard is that information on a single process is often spread out over numerous models, documents, and systems. Despite the potential consequences of this situation, there is a lack of insights on how to mitigate its impact. Against this background, we conducted an explorative case study to analyze the causes and consequences of the fragmentation of process information. We found that the widespread fragmentation of information had a considerable impact on the investigated organization. In particular, fragmentation led to severe maintenance issues, reduced process execution efficiency, and had a negative effect on the quality of process results. Our findings provide useful insights for both practice and research on how to mitigate the negative aspects associated with the fragmentation of process information.

Many organizations use business process models to document business operations and formalize business requirements in software-engineering projects. The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), a specification by the Object Management Group, has evolved into the leading standard for process modeling. One challenge is BPMN's complexity: it offers a huge variety of elements and often several representational choices for the same semantics. This raises the question of how well modelers can deal with these choices. Empirical insights into BPMN use from the practitioners' perspective are still missing. To close this gap, researchers analyzed 585 BPMN 2.0 process models from six companies. They found that split and join representations, message flow, the lack of proper model decomposition, and labeling related to quality issues. They give five specific recommendations on how to avoid these issues.

Process model matching refers to the automatic identification of corresponding activities between two process models. It represents the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as the identification of similar process parts or process model search. A central problem is how to evaluate the performance of process model matching techniques. Often, not even humans can agree on a set of correct correspondences. Current evaluation methods, however, require a binary gold standard, which clearly defines which correspondences are correct. The disadvantage of this evaluation method is that it does not take the true complexity of the matching problem into account and does not fairly assess the capabilities of a matching technique. In this paper, we propose a novel evaluation method for process model matching techniques. In particular, we build on the assessment of multiple annotators to define probabilistic notions of precision and recall. We use the dataset and the results of the Process Model Matching Contest 2015 to assess and compare our evaluation method. We find that our probabilistic evaluation method assigns different ranks to the matching techniques from the contest and allows to gain more detailed insights into their performance.

Documenting business processes using process models is common practice in many organizations. However, not all process information is best captured in process models. Hence, many organizations complement these models with textual descriptions that specify additional details. The problem with this supplementary use of textual descriptions is that existing techniques for automatically searching process repositories are limited to process models. They are not capable of taking the information from textual descriptions into account and, therefore, provide incomplete search results. In this paper, we address this problem and propose a technique that is capable of searching textual as well as model-based process descriptions. It automatically extracts process information from both descriptions types and stores it in a unified data format. An evaluation with a large Austrian bank demonstrates that the additional consideration of textual descriptions allows us to identify more relevant processes from a repository.

To determine whether strategic goals are met, organizations must monitor how their business processes perform. Process Performance Indicators (PPIs) are used to specify relevant performance requirements. The formulation of PPIs is typically a managerial concern. Therefore, considerable effort has to be invested to relate PPIs, described by management, to the exact operational and technical characteristics of business processes. This work presents an approach to support this task, which would otherwise be a laborious and time-consuming endeavor. The presented approach can automatically establish links between PPIs, as formulated in natural language, with operational details, as described in process models. To do so, we employ machine learning and natural language processing techniques. A quantitative evaluation on the basis of a collection of 173 real-world PPIs demonstrates that the proposed approach works well.

Textual process descriptions are widely used in organizations since they can be created and understood by virtually everyone. The inherent ambiguity of natural language, however, impedes the automated analysis of textual process descriptions. While human readers can use their context knowledge to correctly understand statements with multiple possible interpretations, automated analysis techniques currently have to make assumptions about the correct meaning. As a result, automated analysis techniques are prone to draw incorrect conclusions about the correct execution of a process. To overcome this issue, we introduce the concept of a behavioral space as a means to deal with behavioral ambiguity in textual process descriptions. A behavioral space captures all possible interpretations of a textual process description in a systematic manner. Thus, it avoids the problem of focusing on a single interpretation. We use a compliance checking scenario and a quantitative evaluation with a set of 47 textual process descriptions to demonstrate the usefulness of a behavioral space for reasoning about a process described by a text. Our evaluation demonstrates that a behavioral space strikes a balance between ignoring ambiguous statements and imposing fixed interpretations on them.

Many organizations face noncompliance in their business processes. Such noncompliant behavior can range from well-intended actions to the deliberate omission of essential tasks. The current view on noncompliance is mostly negative and many researchers discuss how to avoid it altogether. A gap in the research is a lack of empirical insights on when noncompliance has positive and when it has negative effects. Against this background, we conduct a qualitative study in the customer service department of a company hosting one of Europe’s leading online project platforms. Differing from previous studies on business process noncompliance, the starting point of our study is direct observations of how employees conduct their work. We found that noncompliant behavior with a positive intention had a mostly positive effect on business process outcomes. Unintended factors of noncompliance, such as a lack of knowledge or carelessness, caused the most severe negative impact on business process outcomes.

Many organizations face noncompliance in their business processes. Such noncompliant behavior can range from well-intended actions to the deliberate omission of essential tasks. The current view on noncompliance is mostly negative and many researchers discuss how to avoid it altogether. A gap in the research is a lack of empirical insights on when noncompliance has positive and when it has negative effects. Against this background, we conduct a qualitative study in the customer service department of a company hosting one of Europe’s leading online project platforms. Differing from previous studies on business process noncompliance, the starting point of our study is direct observations of how employees conduct their work. We found that noncompliant behavior with a positive intention had a mostly positive effect on business process outcomes. Unintended factors of noncompliance, such as a lack of knowledge or carelessness, caused the most severe negative impact on business process outcomes.

Although several approaches for service identification have been defined in research and practice, there is a notable lack of fully automated techniques. In this paper, we address the problem of manual work in the context of service derivation and present an approach for automatically deriving service candidates from business process model repositories. Our approach leverages semantic technology in order to derive ranked lists of useful service candidates. An evaluation of the approach with three large process model collection from practice indicates that the approach can effectively identify useful services with hardly any manual effort. The evaluation further demonstrates that our approach can address varying degrees of service cohesion by applying different aggregation mechanisms. Hence, the presented approach represents a useful artifact for enabling business and IT managers to quickly spot reuse potential in their company. In addition, our approach improves the alignment between business and IT. As the ranked service candidates give a good impression on the relative importance of a business operation, they can provide companies with first clues on where IT support is needed and where it could be reduced.

System-related engineering tasks are often conducted using process models. In this context, it is essential that these models do not contain structural or terminological inconsistencies. To this end, several automatic analysis techniques have been proposed to support quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can be checked in an automated fashion, there is a lack of techniques addressing textual quality. More specifically, there is currently no technique available for handling the issue of lexical ambiguity caused by homonyms and synonyms. In this paper, we address this research gap and propose a technique that detects and resolves lexical ambiguities in process models. We evaluate the technique using three process model collections from practice varying in size, domain, and degree of standardization. The evaluation demonstrates that the technique significantly reduces the level of lexical ambiguity and that meaningful candidates are proposed for resolving ambiguity.

Business process management (BPM) is a widely adopted approach for identifying, documenting, and improving business processes. One of the main goals of BPM is to assure that the business processes of an organization constantly produce the desired outcome. One considerable challenge in this context is that not every process can be fully anticipated in advance. Particularly so-called knowledge intensive processes are characterized by a high level of complexity, reduced repeatability, and the occurrence of unexpected events. Many authors argue that knowledge intensive processes may benefit from informal work practices as they exhibit more potential for improvements. Non knowledge intensive processes, on the other hand, are typically considered to be less frequently affected by negative deviations from management intended structures. In this paper, we conduct a positivist case study to challenge these viewpoints from literature. In particular, we empirically investigate the effect of informal work practices on knowledge intensive as well as non knowledge intensive business processes in a German IT company that offers one of Europe's leading online project platforms. Our results show that existing view points are too general and that a more balanced discussion of knowledge intensity is needed.

An organization’s knowledge on its business processes represents valuable corporate knowledge because it can be used to enhance the performance of these processes. In many organizations, documentation of process knowledge is scattered around various process information sources. Such information fragmentation poses considerable problems if, for example, stakeholders wish to develop a comprehensive understanding of their operations. The existence of efficient techniques to combine and integrate process information from different sources can therefore provide much value to an organization. In this work, we identify the general challenges that must be overcome to develop such techniques. This paper illustrates how these challenges should be and, to some extent, are being met in research. Based on these insights, we present three main frontiers that must be further expanded to successfully counter the fragmentation of process information in organizations.

Many techniques for the advanced analysis of process models build on the annotation of process models with elements from predefined vocabularies such as taxonomies. However, the manual annotation of process models is cumbersome and sometimes even hardly manageable taking the size of taxonomies into account. In this paper, we present the first approach for automatically annotating process models with the concepts of a taxonomy. Our approach builds on the corpus-based method of second-order similarity, different similarity functions, and a Markov Logic formalization. An evaluation with a set of 12 process models consisting of 148 activities and the PCF taxonomy consisting of 1,131 concepts demonstrates that our approach produces satisfying results.

Text-based and model-based process descriptions have their own particular strengths and, as such, appeal to different stakeholders. For this reason, it is not unusual to find within an organization descriptions of the same business processes in both modes. When considering that hundreds of such descriptions may be in use in a particular organization by dozens of people, using a variety of editors, there is a clear risk that such models become misaligned. To reduce the time and effort needed to repair such situations, this paper presents the first approach to automatically identify inconsistencies between a process model and a corresponding textual description. Our approach leverages natural language processing techniques to identify cases where the two process representations describe activities in different orders, as well as model activities that are missing from the textual description. A quantitative evaluation with 46 real-life model-text pairs demonstrates that our approach allows users to quickly and effectively identify those descriptions in a process repository that are inconsistent.

The design and development of process-aware information systems is often supported by specifying requirements as business process models. Although this approach is generally accepted as an effective strategy, it remains a fundamental challenge to adequately validate these models given the diverging skill set of domain experts and system analysts. As domain experts often do not feel confident in judging the correctness and completeness of process models that system analysts create, the validation often has to regress to a discourse using natural language. In order to support such a discourse appropriately, so-called verbalization techniques have been defined for different types of conceptual models. However, there is currently no sophisticated technique available that is capable of generating natural-looking text from process models. In this paper, we address this research gap and propose a technique for generating natural language texts from business process models. A comparison with manually created process descriptions demonstrates that the generated texts are superior in terms of completeness, structure, and linguistic complexity. An evaluation with users further demonstrates that the texts are very understandable and effectively allow the reader to infer the process model semantics. Hence, the generated texts represent a useful input for process model validation.

The increased adoption of business process management approaches, tools, and practices has led organizations to accumulate large collections of business process models. These collections can easily include from a hundred to a thousand models, especially in the context of multinational corporations or as a result of organizational mergers and acquisitions. A concrete problem is thus how to maintain these large repositories in such a way that their complexity does not hamper their practical usefulness as a means to describe and communicate business operations. This paper proposes a technique to automatically infer suitable names for business process models and fragments thereof. This technique is useful for model abstraction scenarios, as for instance when user-specific views of a repository are required, or as part of a refactoring initiative aimed to simplify the repository’s complexity. The technique is grounded in an adaptation of the theory of meaning to the realm of business process models. We implemented the technique in a prototype tool and conducted an extensive evaluation using three process model collections from practice and a case study involving process modelers with different experience.

Process modeling has become an essential part of many organizations for documenting, analyzing and redesigning their business operations and to support them with suitable information systems. In order to serve this purpose, it is important for process models to be well grounded in formal and precise semantics. While behavioural semantics of process models are well understood, there is a considerable gap of research into the semantic aspects of their text labels and natural language descriptions. The aim of this paper is to make this research gap more transparent. To this end, we clarify the role of textual content in process models and the challenges that are associated with the interpretation, analysis, and improvement of their natural language parts. More specifically, we discuss particular use cases of semantic process modeling to identify 25 challenges. For each challenge, we identify prior research and discuss directions for addressing them.

Nowadays business process management (BPM) is integral part of many organizations in the private sector. Considering the implementation and maturity of BPM in public authorities, this does not hold true to the same degree. In particular, the willingness to share knowledge about business processes is very limited. This represents a severe problem since authorities have huge overlaps with regard to the services they provide. Hence, the exchange of process knowledge could efficiently support authorities with lower maturity in identifying optimization opportunities. This research paper investigates the circumstances as well as drivers and inhibitors of process knowledge sharing in public organizations. We conduct 15 interviews and use the Grounded Theory method in order to derive a conceptual framework that provides important insights into how process knowledge sharing can be improved in public organizations.

Many use cases in business process management rely on the identification of correspondences between process models. However, the sparse information in process models makes matching a fundamentally hard problem. Consequently, existing approaches yield a matching quality which is too low to be useful in practice. Therefore, we investigate incorporating user feedback to improve matching quality. To this end, we examine which information is suitable for feedback analysis. On this basis, we design an approach that performs matching in an iterative, mixed-initiative approach: we determine correspondences between two models automatically, let the user correct them, and analyze this input to adapt the matching algorithm. Then, we continue with matching the next two models, and so forth. This approach improves the matching quality, as showcased by a comparative evaluation. From this study, we also derive strategies on how to maximize the quality while limiting the additional effort required from the user.

Companies increasingly use business process modeling for documenting and redesigning their operations. However, due to the size of such modeling initiatives, they often struggle with the quality assurance of their model collections. While many model properties can already be checked automatically, there is a notable gap of techniques for checking linguistic aspects such as naming conventions of process model elements. In this paper, we address this problem by introducing an automatic technique for detecting violations of naming conventions. This technique is based on text corpora and independent of linguistic resources such as WordNet. Therefore, it can be easily adapted to the broad set of languages for which corpora exist. We demonstrate the applicability of the technique by analyzing nine process model collections from practice, including over 27,000 labels and covering three different languages. The results of the evaluation show that our technique yields stable results and can reliably deal with ambiguous cases. In this way, this paper provides an important contribution to the field of automated quality assurance of conceptual models.

Process model similarity has developed into a prolific field of investigation. This paper summarizes the research after the CAISE 2008 paper on this topic. We identify categories of problems and provide an outlook on future directions.

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in large process model collections. To support users having different perspectives on complex processes and related data, a PAIS should enable personalized process views, i.e., user-specific abstractions of process models. Despite the abstraction achieved through views of the graphical process models, many end users still struggle with understanding these graphical models and their details. For selected user groups, therefore, a PAIS should provide verbalized process descriptions describing their role in the process. Existing PAISs neither provide mechanisms for managing process views nor verbalized process descriptions. While process views have been used as visual abstractions for large process models, so far no work exists on how to provide both personalized and verbalized process descriptions based on respective views. This paper presents an approach for creating such personalized and verbalized process descriptions based on process views. Furthermore, textual changes of a personalized and verbalized process description are correctly mapped to corresponding updates of the underlying process model. In this context, all other views and process descriptions related to this process model are migrated to the new version of the process model as well. Overall, our approach enables end users to understand and evolve large process models based on personalized and verbalized process descriptions.

Thinking in business processes and using process models for their documentation has become common practice in companies. In many cases this documentation encompasses more than thousands of models. One of the key challenges is achieving consistency of the process model terminology. Especially, the usage of synonym and homonym words is one of the most severe problems for terminological consistency. Therefore, this paper presents an automatic approach to identify synonym and homonym words in model repositories. We challenged the approach against three model collection from practice that are assumed to have different levels of terminological consistency. The evaluation shows that the approach is capable to fulfill these goals and to identify meaningful synonym and homonym candidates for follow-up resolution.

Comparing process models and matching similar activities has recently emerged as a research area of business process management. However, the problem is fundamentally hard when considering realistic scenarios: e.g., there is a huge variety of terms and various options for the grammatical structure of activity labels exist. While prior research has established important conceptual foundations, recall values have been fairly low (around 0.26) – arguably too low to be useful in practice. In this paper, we present techniques for activity label matching which improve current results (recall of 0.44, without sacrificing precision). Furthermore, we identify categories of matching challenges to guide future research.

Process model matching refers to the task of creating correspondences among activities of different process models. This task is crucial whenever comparison and alignment of process models are called for. In recent years, there have been a few attempts to tackle process model matching. Yet, evaluating the obtained sets of correspondences reveals high variability in the results. Addressing this issue, we propose a method for predicting the quality of results derived by process model matchers. As such, prediction serves as a case-by-case decision making tool in estimating the amount of trust one should put into automatic matching. This paper proposes a model of prediction for process matching based on both process properties and preliminary match results.

Large-scale enterprises struggle with an effective alignment of business processes and IT services with business strategy. While process models play an important role for bridging between strategy and IT, there is a need to systematically organize the huge number of models. Process architecture defines an overarching structure for the organization of processes. However, there is a notable research gap on how process architectures are designed in practice. In this paper we address this problem by integrating insights and approaches from practice. We use Grounded Theory to analyze eleven in-depth interviews we conducted. Further, we present findings from studying documents provided by the interviewees. Our contribution is a conceptual framework about process architecture design, along with a classification of process architecture archetypes found in practice. Our results have strong implications since they demonstrate that process architecture design is more complex and context-dependent than assumed.

Large corporations increasingly utilize business process models for documenting and redesigning their operations. The extent of such modeling initiatives with several hundred models and dozens of often hardly trained modelers calls for automated quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can easily be checked by existing tools, there is a notable gap for checking the quality of the textual content of models, in particular, its activity labels. In this paper, we address the problem of activity label quality in business process models. We designed a technique for the recognition of labeling styles, and the automatic refactoring of labels with quality issues. More specifically, we developed a parsing algorithm that is able to deal with the shortness of activity labels, which integrates natural language tools like WordNet and the Stanford Parser. Using three business process model collections from practice with differing labeling style distributions, we demonstrate the applicability of our technique. In comparison to a straightforward application of standard natural language tools, our technique provides much more stable results. As an outcome, the technique shifts the boundary of process model quality issues that can be checked automatically from syntactic to semantic aspects.

Although several approaches for service identification have been defined in research and practice, there is a notable lack of automatic analysis techniques. In this paper we take the integrated approach by Kohlborn et al. as a starting point, and combine different analysis techniques in a novel way. Our contribution is an automated approach for the identification and detailing of service candidates. Its output is meant to provide a transparent basis for making decisions about which services to implement with which priority. The approach has been implemented and evaluated for an industry collection of process models.

Process Modeling is a widely used concept for understanding, documenting and also redesigning the operations of organizations. The validation and usage of process models is however affected by the fact that only business analysts fully understand them in detail. This is in particular a problem because they are typically not domain experts. In this paper, we investigate in how far the concept of verbalization can be adapted from object-role modeling to process models. To this end, we define an approach which automatically transforms BPMN process models into natural language texts and combines different techniques from linguistics and graph decomposition in a flexible and accurate manner. The evaluation of the technique is based on a prototypical implementation and involves a test set of 53 BPMN process models showing that natural language texts can be generated in a reliable fashion.

Business process models are increasingly used by companies, often yielding repositories of several thousand models. These models are of great value for business analysis such as service identification or process standardization. A problem is though that many of these analyses require the pairwise comparison of process models, which is hardly feasible to do manually given an extensive number of models. While the computation of similarity between a pair of process models has been intensively studied in recent years, there is a notable gap on automatically matching activities of two process models. In this paper, we develop an approach based on semantic techniques and probabilistic optimization. We evaluate our approach using a sample of admission processes from different universities.

Quality assurance is a serious issue for large-scale process modelling initiatives. While formal control flow analysis has been extensively studied in prior research, there is little work on how the textual content of a process model and its activity labels can be systematically analysed. In this context, it is a major challenge to systematically identify and to consequently assure high label quality. As many large process model collections contain more than thousand models, each including several activity labels, there is a strong need for an automatic detection of labels that might be of bad quality. Recent research has shown that different grammatical styles correlate with potential ambiguity of a label. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for recognition of activity labeling styles. The developed algorithm exploits natural language processing techniques, e.g., part of speech tagging and analysis of the grammatical structure. We also study how ontologies, like WordNet, can support the solution. We conduct a thorough evaluation of the developed techniques utilising about 6,000 activity labels from the SAP Reference Model. The evaluation of this algorithm shows that spurious labels can be identified with a significant level of precision and recall. In this way, our approach can be used as a means of quality assurance for process repository management by listing bad quality labels, which a human modeler should correct.

Process models are essential tools for managing, understanding and changing business processes. Yet, from a user perspective they can quickly become too complex to deal with. Abstraction – aggregating detailed fragments into more coarse-grained ones – has proven to be a valuable technique to simplify the view on a process model. Various techniques that automate the decision of which model fragments to aggregate have been defined and validated by recent research, but their application is hampered by the lack of abilities to generate meaningful names for such aggregated parts. In this paper, we address this problem by investigating naming strategies for individual model fragments and process models as a whole. Our contribution is an automatic naming approach that builds on the linguistic analysis of process models from industry.

Service composition is a well-established field of research in the service community. Services are commonly regarded as black boxes with well-defined interfaces that can be recursively aggregated into new services. The black-box nature of services does not only include the service implementation but also the middleware and hardware to run the services. Thus, service composition techniques are typically limited to choosing between a set of available services. In this paper we keep the black-box nature and the principle of information hiding for the service implementation, but break up services vertically. By introducing vertical service composition, we allow services to be provisioned on the right middleware when they are requested, thus making service-binding more powerful as services with the desired quality of service can be provisioned on demand. We introduce the concept of vertical service composition and present an extension to an enterprise service bus that implements the concept of vertical service composition by combining concepts from provisioning with those of (dynamic) service binding.

Recently many companies have expanded their business process modeling projects such that thousands of process models are designed and maintained. Activity labels of these models are related to different styles according to their grammatical structure. There are several guidelines that suggest using a verb-object labeling style. Meanwhile, real-world process models often include labels that do not follow this style. In this paper we investigate the potential to improve the label quality automatically. We define and implement an approach for automatic refactoring of labels following action-noun style into verb-object labels. We evaluate the proposed techniques using a collection of real-world process models—the SAP Reference Model.

Service composition is a well-established field of research in the service community. Services are commonly regarded as black boxes with well-defined interfaces that can be recursively aggregated into new services. The black-box nature of services does not only include the service implementation but also the middleware and hardware to run the services. Thus, service composition techniques are typically limited to choosing between a set of available services. In this paper we keep the black-box nature and the principle of information hiding for the service implementation, but break up services vertically. By introducing vertical service composition, we allow services to be provisioned on the right middleware when they are requested, thus making service-binding more powerful as services with the desired quality of service can be provisioned on demand. We introduce the concept of vertical service composition and present an extension to an enterprise service bus that implements the concept of vertical service composition by combining concepts from provisioning with those of (dynamic) service binding.